Everton correspondent Chris Beesley examines how Kevin Thelwell’s summertime efforts as director of football may influence how the Blues approach the January transfer market.
Although a solution wasn’t found until the last week of summer previous year, Kevin Thelwell’s efforts this season may pay off in January.
Thelwell’s quiet work in the background will, hopefully, make this year’s second January transfer window for the Everton director of football far less stressful than it was for him during his baptism of fire a year prior.
Thelwell, who became Marcel Brands’ replacement after leaving Major League Soccer’s New York Red Bulls on February 25, 2022, to return to his native north-west England, had a mixed first window that summer. While exceeding the money recovered and costing over £60 million between them
for Richarlison from Tottenham Hotspur, Madou Onana, Dwight McNeil, and James Garner all fit the description of the young players the team would like to sign—people with room to grow—and in the eighteen months that have passed, they have all established themselves as regulars in the lineup.
Even if it’s much older, free transferJames Tarkowski, 31, has shown himself to be a wise addition. Apart from the two games in which club captain Sean Coleman has played this season, the center-back has worn the armband. He has continued the level of consistency shown at his former club Burnley, where he played in more than 30 Premier League games for five consecutive seasons, including more than 35 in the last four, by being a constant presence for the Blues in the competition since joining.
Idrissa Gueye has made 47 appearances for Everton in his second stint. Although he picked up right where he left off after leaving for Paris Saint-Germain three years prior, the 34-year-old—who turned down a lucrative offer to return—is not as dynamic as he was in his first stint at Goodison Park. Conor Coady’s loan move from Thelwell’s longtime employers Wolverhampton Wanderers first looked like a huge coup, with the
The 30-year-old former Liverpool star returned to his home Merseyside, but his performance declined and the Blues decided not to exercise their £4.5 million option to sign him permanently. This season, he has only played in four of Leicester City’s Championship games.
Ruben Vinagre, who is currently playing for Hull City in the second division, simply wasn’t cut out to be a left-back.
ack option on loan from Sporting CP, who played just 24 minutes in the Premier League during the first month of the season in two substitute appearances, but the biggest letdown was probably Everton’s main signing up front. The Blues spent £15 million on Brighton & Hove Albion’s Neil Maupay due to concerns about Dominic Calvert-Lewin’s fitness. Not only did Maupay not perform similarly to their number nine, but the Frenchman, who is accustomed to playing with a strike partner, appeared to be a different player on Merseyside.
Even though the team hailed Maupay as a Premier League player with track record and he scored the game-winning goal against West Ham United in just his second Everton game, that ended up being his only goal in 32 appearances before to his loan to Brentford on September 1st of last year. Thelwell, understandably, stayed back in the UK to work on possible moves while Frank Lampard’s squad headed “Down Under” for the Sydney Super Cup, with at least two reinforcements targeted for the winter window, as a result of Maupay’s persistent inability to gel.
Even owner Farhad Moshiri declared in January that “If we need a striker, we will get one.” However, the Blues, who had just fired Lampard, were ultimately left empty-handed after missing out on Arnaut Danjuma, who changed his mind at the last minute after Tottenham Hotspur hijacked Thelwell’s deal. The player is believed to have got off his Merseyside-bound train at Crewe Station to turn around. SubstitutionWhen Sean Dyche showed up in the last week of the window, he personally attested to the work he was doing alone, but his director of both football and chairman No fresh faces showed up in the hectic final few days before the window closed and £45 million was raised via the sale of Anthony Gordon to Newcastle United.
On the one hand, it appeared at the time that Everton’s executives were failing in their duty to gamble with the team’s Premier League survival by not increasing its player count. However, as Thelwell subsequently acknowledged, due to ongoing financial difficulties, he would have been forced to bring in subpar players out of impulse. Some of those apparent holes in the squad were filled last summer, even though the purse strings are still tight.
Attack-oriented alternatives continued to be preferred, but full-back cover was also needed. Dyche made his first Blues acquisition, Ashley Young, 38, the club’s oldest-ever outfield debutant, by bringing in one of his own former teammates. At his second request, Thelwell also secured Danjuma’s loan from Villarreal, where he had seen limited action throughout his tenure in north London.
Youssef Chermiti, who signed a structured agreement with Sporting CP worth up to £15 million, gave Everton a striker who at least looked like their number nine. But the rookie, who had only made 16 first-team appearances for his former team, is more similar to Calvert-Lewin, who joined from Sheffield United in 2016 as a teenager and still appears to be a long way off from being a serious contender in the Premier League.
In-loanIn what now appears to be a preemptive strike to cover Alex Iwobi’s deadline-day departure to Fulham, Jack Harrison has offered balance and a touch of class on the right wing. However, more consistency is needed. It wasn’t until the last week of the transfer window that Thelwell moved to bring in a legitimate replacement for Calvert-Lewin, who had just sustained a facial injury at Aston Villa on his comeback, in the massive shape of Beto, the club’s second 6ft 4in Portuguese target man acquired last summer.
A longtime Everton target, the player had scored double figures in Serie A for Udinese over the previous two seasons, but it finally took a £25.7 million sum to secure him.
Beto has not been particularly productive thus far, despite scoring on his debut against League Two Doncaster Rovers in the Carabao Cup just one day after signing. Although Dyche believes the player offers slightly different qualities than Calvert-Lewin, the two can at least be switched around easily without changing the team’s structure or system.
Everton is currently just one spot and one position above the relegation zone; however, if not for the 10-point deduction, they would be in 12th place. With such strong foundation and improvements in their season’s results, the club, still pending ratification of 777 Partners’ proposed takeover, can at least approach the January window with a potentially opportunistic rather than proactive stance.
That’s a big jump up from this time last year, and it gives us room to clean the decks and restructure the team in a much more meaningful way this summer.
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